Philosophical Blog Post on Yann Martel's "Life of Pi"

“Life of Pi,” is a fictional book that follows the life story of an Indian man during the time when India was under British rule. When Pi, the main character, travels to Canada with his family and the family zoo aboard a ship, the ships malfunctions, and sinks. The only clear human survivor is Pi. Pi survives with a Royal Bengal Tiger on board his lifeboat for around 200 days. Life of Pi is a story about struggling to survive through seemingly impossible odds. Pi leaves all his beliefs back on the shipwrecked boat and does things that go against his morals to survive. Although this is a fictional story, it brings up the theme of surviving. Surviving is everyone’s reason for living. Pi displays this theme in a story of survival.

Even from before the shipwreck, Pi showed that he could adapt to survive in society. Because his full first name is Piscine, and it does relatively sound like, “pissing”, students called him by the latter name. When he entered a new school months later, he used his intelligence to change his name to a shorter more school-appropriate name, Pi. But survival tends to be relating to the wild, in which Pi also accomplished. Right after the shipwreck, Pi rationed his food off to the side, carefully counting his food and water and dividing the rations up for a year. Also, immediately after he noticed that a Royal Bengal Tiger was aboard the lifeboat he planned to try to get it off or somehow restrict it from eating him. Surviving pays the price of leaving things behind, of sacrificing.

When you sacrifice what is dear to you, it may be easier to survive. That is what Pi did, he threw away his thoughts about his dead family, and faced his life, his own chances of surviving in the middle of the vast ocean. He sacrificed most of his religious morals to survive, for example his vegetarianism. Pi became part of the ocean, he became wild. He wasn’t afraid of the water after spending so much time on it, nor was he afraid of the creatures that lurked in the ocean after them spending time around his boat. Even though Pi was careful around Richard Parker, the tiger, he knew he wouldn’t hurt him. Richard Parker and Pi became close at sea. Two apex predators on the close confines of a life boat, co-exist. This is what survival is all about, adapting around your surroundings to live.

Yann Martel writes this story to show that even the most unsuspected person could live threw the hardest of times. He uses a frail teenager that although intelligent, would not seem to be physically able to survive. Pi survived against most odds, and Martel hints that anyone could too.